Friday, 11 November 2016

How I Edit My Instagram Photos

I'm not going to pretend that I'm some big shot know-it-all about Instagram because I have 470ish followers and get on average about 50-60 likes per photo. I am not a profesh. However, I like the way I edit my photos and I think that sharing that process is going to be not only helpful to you dear reader, but also to me - when you invariably tell me what I'm doing wrong (all criticisms are more than welcomed in the comments below!).

I am definitely one of those people that has a theme and tries to stick to it as much as possible. However, I do still post pretty much whatever I like, I just try to keep at least one aspect of the photo similar to the one previous. Does that make sense? One of my main things you will see in almost all my photos is either plants or coffee, or if I'm feeling particularly frisky you will get both. If you look at the sample photo you will see that even though it's clearly a picture of my nails, there are flowers in the background and a cheeky Starbucks cup.

The ORIGINAL

This is the original unedited version. I usually take my photos with my iPhone camera (it's a 5S so not great quality) or if I'm feeling fancy and ahead of my game I will use my Canon EOS 1200D and then transfer to my phone using drop box. I always keep my feed as square photos. I just prefer the way this looks on my feed. If I have taken the photos on my DSLR then I will use Facetune to crop my image into a square.

STEP 1: FACETUNE

I know a lot of people have a love/hate relationship with Facetune but I actually love it. I don't use it to touch up selfies as I'm pretty comfortable sharing my gross skin and chubby features (I don't often take selfies mind you). But what I do love it for is the colour correction features.

Facetune has some awesome features that allow you to manipulate the colour of certain things really easily.

In the photo above I have used the "Whiten" feature - you will be able to see this the most on the rose, but it's also used on the wall, coffee cup and jumper.

Often in photos of my desk or on wooden surfaces I will have used the BW Silver Filter and applied it specifically to the wooden surface to make it look greyer and more aesthetically pleasing. This is a time consuming painful task that sees me painting the filter carefully onto any unsightly wood. My nice orange pine desk is not great for aesthetics and this way, I can create photos on my desk that still fit into my theme without having to spend a fortune on a new desk or the time of staining it.

STEP 2: AFTERLIGHT

This is the main editing process. I have a lot of edits that I make on Afterlight and they are the exact same every single time so I'm going to list them below.

Brightness - adjust to +100

Contrast - adjust to +10-20 depending on image

Saturation - adjust to +10-20 depending on image

Temperature - adjust to around -50 but this is highly dependant on the lighting. I like the photo to have a cool tone most of the time.

Filters

Guest - Russ - adjust to about 10-20

Seasons - Row - adjust to about 10-20

I then add a plain white frame of 25 to the image - this is obviously a personal preference of mine and is definitely not everyone's cup of tea. I just think it makes my feed look cleaner and less cluttered somehow.

STEP 3: VSCO

I don't actually use VSCO that much but I do really like one of the filters and so I apply it to every image at the very end as I just feel like it adds a certain quality to the image that I really like.

So the filter I use is T1/Moody and is adjusted to about a 5-6 depending on the image.

That's it! I don't know if this seems a lot or not much but this is what I do every day to every photo that I take for Instagram!

I'd really love to know what you do for your Instagram photos and if you have and critiques of my process, or ways I could improve!